Anglo-Saxon Church: Part Four

Well, I'm absolutely delighted to have completed my Anglo-Saxon Church scratch build! It's certainly given me a headache or two along the way. And there were times when it felt like it would never even get built, let alone have a chance of getting finished. But here I am and I have to admit, I'm really happy with the result.

I spoke a lot in my first post on this build about the different ways I could have gone about constructing my church. You can read all about it here. And as you would expect, I went with my trusty foam core and cereal packet card cladding method. It's cheap and can create some really wonderful scenery. Of course, using this method for stone is really difficult as card isn't exactly textured like stone. I was therefore dependent on my painting method to give the illusion of a textured surface.

As you can see, I spent a lot of time layering up the stonework. For full details check out Part Two and Part Three.

Of course, now that our first game of Blood Eagle is on Monday, I've spent a lot of time working on the rest of my buildings as well. To be perfectly honest, this at times served as a perfect distraction to my fear of ruining my model at the painting stage.

Today though, I decided to plough on. I'm using one of my larger brushes or this job, both to help cover such a large area, and also to use afterwards for all the drybrushing that lay ahead of me. I used three paints from the local craft shop, almond, black and what I think is yellow ocher. I can't be perfectly sure as the name rubbed off long ago. With these three colours its quite easy to create a dark khaki kind of colour which I used as a base coat. I have to admit, it was difficult watching all those nice black brick lines disappear under my brush, but as I had pressed hard when i had inscribed them onto the card, I really didn't need to worry.

I then began applying successively lighter coats by adding more of the yellow ocher and almond. I added it all by drybrushing so as to reveal the brickwork.

Perhaps I should explain what I mean by drybrushing like this. It's actually more like extreme drybrushing. If you've ever drybrushed a piece of scenery or a miniature, you'll know that you take your colour of choice, dab a little on the end of your brush and then wipe the excess off the brush with a piece of cloth (or kitchen towel as is my wont) before lightly brushing over the surface of the model. This means the paint will only adhere to the raised surfaces. However, what I'm doing here is removing almost all of the paint from the brush. Then, with the application of a little force as well, I apply the paint with diagonal strokes, first one way, then the other. On an area the size of the church, you soon run out of paint and have to repeat the process time and again. As you do so you find the paint in the palette drying out so you need to mix more. This is definitely a good thing, as it gives variation in the colours you use. This mimics the variations in the stones as you would find in real life. over a period of time, each successive drybrushed highlight overlaps the next and a texture (and the stonework) begins to reveal itself.

As you can see in the next photo, the detailing soon began to appear before my eyes.

My earlier hesitancy was washed away and I actually found myself rather enjoying the process, which, after all, is supposed to be what this sort of thing is all about!

The roof was painted simply by mixing my black and white. I aimed for a medium grey as a base coat and drybrushed successively lighter coats. Even I was amazed at the apparent blue hue it began to achieve!

The doors were painted with a mix of black and brown.

And then suddenly it was done!

And I'm absolutely delighted with the result! Of course I now need to get on with painting a monk or two for Monday's game...